JoAnn and Bill Adkins have FIU football season tickets behind the home team’s bench and went to four home games. They would have gone to more, but they also own Marshall football season tickets behind the visitor’s bench and went to four home games there.

And the only thing that could keep them away from FIU versus Marshall in Tuesday’s Beef O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl arrived Monday: Dortha Delphia Adkins, their first child.

“I get really excited at football season,” JoAnn said. “That’s our Christmas. Everybody says we’re having a ‘Christmas Baby.’ I always correct them and say “We’re having a bowl season baby.”

The Adkins come by their dual loyalties honestly. They adopted the FIU sports program even before JoAnn Adkins started working at FIU as the College of Arts & Sciences Communications Director in February 2010.

While they chose FIU, Marshall chose them — JoAnn’s the great great great great great great granddaughter of John Marshall. Marbury v. Madison John Marshall. The first Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. The guy the school in West Virginia is named after John Marshall.

As JoAnn explained that game trips are for games and family only if they can be fit in around the game experience, Bill quipped, “Marshall is family.”

To say Mama and Papa Adkins are sports geeks wouldn’t be an insult. JoAnn went to the Sun Belt Conference volleyball tournament hosted by FIU in November. Bill notes that FIU’s baseball team won the Sun Belt Conference the season after JoAnn began work at FIU as if that’s how he remembers the month and year she started. But their deepest love is football.

JoAnn’s purse is shaped and colored like a football. Ask if they’re going to St. Petersburg anyway just to be around the bowl atmosphere and JoAnn sounds like a coach — they’ll visit the pediatrician, “get an evaluation” and it “could be a game-day decision.”

Their wedding needed only play-by-play announcer Keith Jackson to be a 1990s Lite beer commercial.

A piece of the original turf from Marshall’s stadium was the aisle runner. The site was the fountain memorial to the Marshall football team that perished in the 1970 plane crash. Most weddings see the guests throwing rice at the bride and groom. The Adkins’ saw the bride and groom throw mini-footballs with their names and wedding date into the crowd of guests.

“We had a tailgate reception,” JoAnn said. “It was upstairs in the ballroom, but we did brats and burgers, the traditional tailgate food. When they introduced the bridal party, it was like a football game — the groomsmen coming in “180 pounds from wherever,” and they would run in. … The bridesmaids would spike their bouquets. We had a lot of fun with it.”

Their iPhones have green backs with the Marshall “M.” You could glean a short history of Marshall football just from the living room of their condominium. Marshall and FIU schedules sit side by side on the refrigerator. JoAnn cautions that it looks so lopsided toward Marshall because so much of her FIU merchandise adorns her office.

Back in 2009, after almost four years in Miami, JoAnn recalls Bill saying, “We’re never going to be UM fans. We should go to a couple of FIU games to see if we like it. It would be nice to have a home away from home team to kind of root for.”

JoAnn said, “They remind us a lot of Marshall in that they live in the shadows of a larger program, their neighbor … I won’t say the [name of the] school up north we have to put up with.”

“The school coming down to lose to Clemson [in the Orange Bowl],” Bill said, as close as either came to mentioning West Virginia by name.

“They’ve had to fight for everything they’ve done,” JoAnn said. “People have kind of beat up on them. After that plane crash, the ’70s and the ’80s were not good years, until the late 1980s.”

Soon after, JoAnn heard about a job opening at FIU and jumped on it. Bill said they see the bowl matchup as a chance to educate their Marshall friends about FIU and vice versa.

So, the obvious question: For which team will they root Tuesday?

“We want a good game, we’ll cheer for both, we know all the players on each side,” Bill said. “The way we like to put it is: We absolutely love FIU. But, literally, we are Marshall.”